Also not to be confused with the Rule of Two or the Evil Mentor, who is not only evil, but also corrupts his disciples with evil teachings. Teachers found in an Academy of Evil are usually evil, but so are the students, so they don't count.

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

Harumi Saotome of the Higa team in The Prince of Tennis. This is the guy who actually orders his pupils throw balls at the rival coaches to injure them, and throws tantrums when they don't go along with it.

Kuzuki of Fate/stay night is a bit of a subversion. He's well-liked among the students, and isn't actually evil. He's just amoral and has no problem going along with Caster's plans, which involve mass murder.

In the original manga, it was hard to find a teacher in Domino High who wasn't evil, or who at least wasn't a creep. The worst was probably Ms. Chono (called "The Wicked Witch of Expel" by her co-workers behind her back for the sadistic way she punished students) who was so bad that Yami actually inflicted a Penalty Game on her to teach her a lesson. (And compared to most of them, she actually got off easy.)

Calling Napolean (also from GX) evil may be a stretch; he was certainly a Jerkass, but he did have some good points. Eventually, he made a complete Heel–Face Turn.

Professor Chronos was much the same.

Then there was Professor Satou. He probably could be considered a Well-Intentioned Extremist because he felt he had to eliminate Judai, thinking that Judai (who was a hero despite being a poor student) was a bad influence on the other student. (He failed to realize that he was little more than an Unwitting Pawn for Cobra, and it cost him in the end.)

He didn't care at all that Cobra was willing to let Asuka drown in order to help him win the duel. Definitely evil.

Ayukawa wasn't evil in the least; she was one of the sweetest members of the faculty of Duel Academy. However, when much of the cast became Duel Zombies during Season 3, she was one of the most dangerous, and probably should be mentioned.

Yuu Nikaidou-sensei of Shugo Chara!, who is only a teacher as it involves screening children from Seiyo Academy to see if they possess the legendary "Embryo" as their "Hearts Egg". As the best way to draw out a "Hearts Egg" is to make a child become filled with self doubt about their aspirations for life, and usually means that without outside help they get their dreams crushed and he is a Child Hater, he's presented as evil.

The teacher in Koe No Katachi, who not only actively allows for a deaf student of his to be bullied and tormented constantly, finds it fun to watch and even encourages it. When he and the class are in danger of being called out for this, he uses one of his students as a scapegoat, shifting all blame onto him. Said student spends the rest of the year facing worse torment then the deaf girl and once again the teacher allows and encourages it readily.

Kitano in Battle Royale. Although this is almost justified by the fact that the world has gone to hell and the students are unruly to the point of stabbing him at random in the hall. He doesn't actually do anything malevolent to them until after they've left school and he enrolls them in the BR program

Sam Lombardo in Wild Things, who rapes one of his students when he gets the chance. Before it's revealed that he's a different kind of bad, as they were working together to con the girl's rich mom out of millions of dollars. Sam just seems to be a lying sleazeball...but at the end we learn that he's been sleeping with Kelly for a long time, thereby committing statutory rape.

The Assistant Principal, and the super-teachers he hires, in Korean action-comedy Volcano High.

In Hot Fuzz, the schoolteacher is one of the members of the villainous NWA.

One of the biker gang in Weird Science indicates he is this as the bikers are retreating from Wyatt's house:

Biker: Could we keep this between us? I'd really hate to lose my teaching job.

All the movies in The Substitute series will usually reveal that one of the other teachers is actually controlling the criminal operation that the Action Hero teacher needs to dismantle.

The Peanut Butter Solution has the Signor, an evil art teacher who kidnaps a student to make paintbrushes out of his magical hair. Yeah, it's that kind of film.

Fan Fiction

Harry Potter fanfiction. Way too many people like to portray Dumbledore as a Manipulative Bastard who's setting up Harry as a Heroic Sacrifice to defeat Voldemort, in some cases with Dumbledore planning to take all the glory immediately after. A few fanfics also have him paying off Ron/Hermione/Ginny/whoever to be Harry's "friend" as a way for Dumbledore to spy on him.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Lockhart wasn't working for the villains, but the degree of selfishness it takes to steal others' memories for fame and be willing to let an eleven-year-old die to maintain his reputation probably counts as a banal kind of evil.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - The Carrows, who were installed by Voldemort and aren't so much teachers as anti-Muggle propagandists. They're less subtle in their prejudice than Umbridge, and even more sadistic. Umbridge tortured students herself, while they encourage their favourites to torture other students.

Agatha Trunchbull in Matilda isn't just a Sadist Teacher, it becomes obvious at the end that she probably either herself murdered Miss Honey's father/her brother-in-law or at least had him assassinated.

Miss Gaunt in Ghosts of Fear Street: Who's Been Sleeping in my Grave?.

The Teacher From The Black Lagoon and its many, many sequels would qualify as the best example if The X-Files hadn't taken that honor. "This is a whole boy. This is half a boy. Now you've learned fractions."

Mrs. Gorf in the Wayside School series, who turned students into apples. There were several other evil teachers as well.

Vice-Principal Chapman from Animorphs, who's high up in the Yeerk front organization The Sharing (which is similar to a scouting group or something) and often tries to recruit students, including the protagonists. He acts like a nice guy, though.

Professor Denovo, the protagonist's former mentor in Three Parts Dead, is a monster in ways that take most of the book for the reader to really appreciate. He once stripped Tara of free will, then tried to have her killed when she rebelled. He is a self-made Humanoid Abomination. And he has a completely plausible plan to make himself something rather greater than a god.

Alex Rider: In Point Blanc, the eponymous Point Blanc is an exclusive boarding school for the troubled sons of wealthy families. There are only two teachers: Mad Doctor Dr Hugo Grief and his dragon, the freakishly strong Mrs Stellenbosch. Aside from being unrepentant white supremacists, Grief is secretly replacing the boys under his care with clones of himself to allow them to control the world in a generation.

Live-Action TV

Power Rangers Dino Thunder - Principal Randall, aka aka Elsa, The Dragon to Big Bad Mesogog. While Mesogog's human alter ego, Dr. Anton Mercer, also stood in as a teacher for a while, he doesn't count as Mercer was good and resisting Mesogog's control.

The headmaster Mr. Finch and the new staff he installed (including a few dinner ladies) in the Deffry Vale School in the Doctor Who episode "School Reunion".

In the The Outer Limits (1963) episode "The Special One", Mr. Zeno, an alien in human form, tutors gifted children, planning to indoctrinate them and use their advanced scientific skills to help his planet conquer Earth. Zeno kills one father who discovers what's going on, and almost kills another before his current pupil (the son of Zeno's intended target) turns the tables on him.

Played for Laughs in Monty Python's Flying Circus skit "Self-Defense Against Fresh Fruits". The teacher teaches the students how to defend themselves against fresh fruits, more dangerous than pointed sticks* SHUT UP by telling them to attack him with fruits, and then he killed the students one by one in the name of "self-defense", in an increasingly crazy ways (first shooting the student with a gun, then dropping a 1-ton anvil on another, then releasing a tiger to devour the rest).

Mr. Sweeny in Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, most notably in the teacher's episode where he was actually labeled as the evil teacher who wants nothing more than to see you fail. Subverted later on, though, when Ned comes to the conclusion that no teachers are evil, and they just want to see you succeed. Along with this, Mr. Sweeny shows moments where he is actually a nice guy, just strict.

All teachers in House of Anubis tend to fall into this trope, most notably Victor, Vera and Miss Denby.

Also tends to be subverted, as this is mostly just a title, and many of the teachers still do genuinely care for the students despite being part of the 'evil' group, most notably Jason, who had actually tried to HELP Patricia in the beginning and still cared about her well-being even after his Face–Heel Turn. Later it was revealed that he had only joined Victor and the others because he was suffering a degenerative illness and immortality was the only way to save his life. Other examples of this are Mrs. Andrews, who quits the society and leaves the school as she feels the students should come first and Mr. Sweet, who despite almost always taking Victor's side, is Eddie's father and whenever the students are in trouble, chooses them over Victor. He also left the society in the second season to focus on being a good principle.

Mrs. Argent and Kate argent from Teen Wolf: Both part of a hunter family that is out to kill most of the main characters and Kate even did burn down a house that contained all of Derek's family members and Mrs. Argent blatantly threating Scott with death if he continues to date her daughter.

While you would have expected this type of villain to have been common in Codename: Kids Next Door (the heroes fought evil adults, after all), the team tended to have bigger problems with evil students than with teachers. In fact, the closest they ever came to a villain like this was Mrs. Thomson, the Were-Dog Queen, and she was a subversion, having been inflicted by the curse of lycanthropy by an angry ex-husband. She turned out to actually be a rather decent sort in the end.

Rancid Rabbit and Sally O'Neil from the CatDog episode, Back to School. Also the teacher in the end of the episode "Escape from the Deep End."

The fill-in for Ms. Keane in The Powerpuff Girls episode "Substitute Creature" subverts this. The girls assume he's mean and villainous because he's, well, monstrous looking. But his credentials as a qualified teacher show the girls otherwise.

Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero has Rippen (Art Teacher when not part-time villain) and Larry (Principal when not serving as Rippen's part time minion).

The Simpsons: In 'Nightmare Cafeteria', the third segment of the Halloween special "Treehouse of Horror V", the faculty of Springfield Elementary become cannibals to solve the overcrowding of students in detention and food budget cuts.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy